DOK Leipzig 2011 – Arabien
Obvious to make a series of films from the Arab countries – Arabien as the organisers called it, and it sounds much nicer in German. I saw a couple of them, ”Tahrir 2011”, ”I am in the Square” and ”No…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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Læs mereDOK Leipzig 2011 – Arabien
DOK Leipzig 2011 – Helena Trestikova
The industry part of DOK Leipzig introduced a session with three works in progress. I was asked to be one of the commentators of the first film to be presented, which was with Czech Helena Trestikova as the director, well-known…
CPH:DOX November 3-13
It is impossible – with a short text – to introduce the programme of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. It is overwhelming to sit with the newspaper catalogue in your hands, putting small X’es for what you want to…
Jan Banning: Bureaucratics
It is such a good idea: To travel to many different countries and take photos of bureaucrats. Dutch photographer Jan Banning did so together with colleague writer Will Tinnemans. Together they made a book – you can browse through it…
Doc Discussion Translated into Russian
Ludmila Nazaruk, who runs the Russian documentary website www.miradox.ru informs filmkommentaren that text entries from our Doc Discussion have been translated into Russian. She writes: Nice and initiative filmmakers from Moscow – here is their blog in the live journal http://albatrossdoc.livejournal.com/78661.html translated…
Yamagata Int. Documentary Film Festival/ 3
A couple of months ago filmkommentaren posted three texts about the prestigious Japanese film festival (link 1, link 2, link 3). One text started like this: ”Facing reality, what is to be done?” is the headline of the introductory text of the…
DOK Leipzig Intro
It’s European doc festival time and documentarians like Koen Suidgeest (see below) will go to Leipzig in Germany, Jihlava in Czech Republic, DocLisboa in Portugal and idfa in Amsterdam – maybe asking themselves “what am I doing here” OR “great…
What do Directors Get out of Festivals?
… a good question, put by Koen Suidgeest, who has been extremely busy in the promotion of his important humanistic documentary, “Karla’s Arrival”, that right now also is launched through a kickstarter campaign to collect money to get the film…
Cattin & Kostomarov: The Mother
This international renowned film by Swiss Antoine Cattin and Pavel Kostomarov reaches Danish Television (DR/TV) on tuesday October 11 as part of the strand Dokumania and under the Danish title, ”Den russiske mor”. The film was at the Magnificent7 European…
Mads Brügger: The Ambassador/ idfa
From the press release of IDFA today: The 24th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will open on November 16 in Pathé Tuschinski with The Ambassador by Danish filmmaker and journalist Mads Brügger Cortzen. In this documentary, Brügger Cortzen exposes…
Mads Brügger: The Ambassador
Filmkommentaren was invited to look at the new feature length documentary by Danish Mads Brügger (selected for the upcoming idfa festival competition in Amsterdam) and watched the film together with students at the documentary film school Zelig in Bolzano, Italy.…
Syrian Filmmaker Arrested
This is unfortunately another text from the never ending news story to be brought from Syria. This time about a dear colleague from the team of the Dox Box festival. The text below is copy-pasted from the facebook, where his…
Vilnius Documentary Film Festival – Awards
The small film festival with the fine programme of international documentaries ends today sunday October 2. The awards for the Baltic Documentary Competition were given out last night. 12 films were in the programme, three received awards – diplomas and…
Mindaugas Survila: The Field of Magic
After the award ceremony of the 8th Vilnius Documentary Film Festival , a new Lithuanian documentary had its premiere in Vilnius. ”The Field of Magic” has been on its way for years and premieres in a version that is full…
Henrikas Sablevicius
They know how to remember and honour their artists in Lithuania, including the documentary filmmakers, I was reminded again today at the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival. Talking to directors Giedre Beinoriute and Audrius Stonys, they told me that a film…
Vilnius Documentary Film Festival
Sunny and peaceful Vilnius hosts for the 8th time a documentary festival, full of fine international documentaries, as well as a competitive Baltic section with 12 films. I am here for the latter to be a juror together with filmmaker…
DOC Meeting Argentina
It was the fifth edition of DOC Meeting Argentina that took place this last week. A workshop for pitch preparation of 24 projects was arranged September 19-21, the pitching forum took place the two following days, September 22 & 23,…
DOC Meeting Argentina/ 2
In the ”conferencias”, three broadcasters in a row: History Channel Latin America, ORF Austria, ZDF Three different profiles. And three different ways of presentation. Miguel Brailovsky from History Channel Latin America used power point as the presentation tool, when he…
DOC Meeting Argentina/ 3
Stories, stories, stories… a pitching forum like this in Argentina is in a way one long learning process for someone from the North, who has some, but still a pretty limited knowledge about Latin American history, art and culture, religion,…
DOC Meeting Argentina/ 4
The most applauded film projects were connected to blindness. The young director Argimiro Wanadi Siso Saldivia (what a name!) from Venezuela presented ”The Labyrinth of the Possible”, which seems to become a strong documentary about the charismatic Sonia Soberats, a…
Punto de Vista Festival
A film festival is threatened, Punto de Vista in Spain, an important fest for the artistic documentary. A petition has been established, see below. And here are some texts taken from the website of the prestigious festival: The International Documentary…
DOKLeipzig Focus on Arab Spring
Press release from DOK Leipzig: In its focus on the Arab world, DOK Leipzig features films from Tunisia and Egypt. The upheaval in the Arab world is far from over, yet the 54th DOK Leipzig will be presenting the first…
The End of Pitching Sessions/ 2
Lithuanian producer Dagne Vildziunaite writes after the Baltic Sea Forum in Riga – a perfect follow-up to the doc-discussion on this site: I usually say it was nice to meet you again. But this time I want to say a…
News from Paris: Goodbye Mubarak!
This blog has followed with great interest the popular uprising in the Arab world, the good news and the bad news. Coming home to Paris after the vacation, the first results of how the situation translates into films are starting…
The Syrian Revolution/ 7
Facebook is a very important tool for us to achieve information about what happens in Syria. Filmmaking friends are bloggers, who constantly convey the hard facts about the daily atrocities – while other media give space for analyses connected to…
The End of Pitching Sessions?
So, no more pitching sessions, the young distributor said to me during the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries in Riga? She had followed the Doc Discussion on this blog, and had read the many skeptical texts from filmmakers, who saw…
Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries
It was the 15th edition of the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries that ended in Riga yesterday with the presentation of a new project by Herz Frank, ”Without Fear”, to be co-directed by the master himself and Maria Kravchenko, with…
Doc Discussion/ 11
Mikael Opstrup writes: Dear Louise, Thanks a lot for your thoughts on the future for documentary. I think you are pointing out the right issues, I will try to address a few of them. For me this debate started with…
Doc Discussion/ 10
Louise Rosen, who started this Doc Discussion writes: Dear Mikael (Opstrup), Reading the posts is uncomfortable – the humiliation and frustration of the filmmakers, the sense from the CEs/funders of being overwhelmed and likewise frustrated. I feel both sets of…
Doc Discussion/ 9
Charlie Phillips writes: Tue has kindly given us an opportunity to respond to some critical comments about Sheffield Doc/Fest in the last few months on his blog. We think this blog is brilliant, especially with the recent discussions over the…
Baltic Sea Forum and Screenings 2011
Documentary filmmakers from the Baltic countries, Russia, Poland, Norway and Sweden gather this week in Riga, Latvia. For the 15th time the Forum, that started on the Danish island of Bornholm, organises a meeting between those who have ideas for…
Sergey Kachin: On the Way Home
A film about an ordinary couple, Aleksay and Valya, it could be a story from everywhere… she sits at home in the house far away from big cities, she knits and sews and waits for the husband to call and…
DOC Discussion/ 8
Comments on the Doc Discussion have been posted on facebook as well. They take different directions. Producers Marie Olesen, Scotland and Sinisa Juricic, Croatia characterise the pitching as “a fool’s game” and “a showcase of big ego’s from the other…
DOC Discussion/ 7
Iikka Vehkalahti writes: Dear Tue and others. I am delighted, that Louise and Mikael took the cat on the table (or how do you say in it real English?). Anyway, now after one month out from the position of a…
DOC Discussion/ 6
Doug Aubrey writes: Hi Tue, here are some personal comments that I would like to share with you… I’m glad to see that some of the more – shall we call them – mature protagonists are addressing the issue of…
DOC Discussion/ 5
Philippe Van Meerbeeck writes: Dear friends, My heart bleeds when I read your lines. They talk about a past that will not come back. ‘Television is dead but doesn’t know it’: when I said this in 2005 to a room…
Doc Discussion/ 4
Jorge Yetano writes: I was reading the posts from Louise Rosen and Mikael Opstrup, and I must say, I have been reflecting on the subject myself for some time now, like most of us, just trying to guess which way…
Doc Discussion/ 1
If you surf around on websites announcing workshops and pitching fora you might very easily get the impression that everything is fine with documentary financing and coproductions between the countries. It is not, and it should be discussed. This is…
Doc Discussion/ 2
Louise Rosen writes: Dear Tue and Mikael It was a pleasure working with you again at Storydoc this year. Wonderful that we had a really diverse representation from all over the southern Mediterranean and could spend a day on the…
Doc Discussion/ 3
Mikael Opstrup writes: Dear Louise Thanks for your raising the issue about independent, feature docs. It’s of course a key issue, as you point out. I see it like this: 15 years ago the establishing of a ‘preproduction TV-market’ with…
The Syrian Revolution/ 6
A profile photo was changed on facebook…
The Syrian Revolution/ 5
This story has been brought in some Western media… a quote from storyful.com below, more can be read on the site where also the cartoonist’s regime critical works can be watched: Famous cartoonist and scathing critic of Syria’s Ba’athist regime,…
D.A. Pennebaker: Monterey Pop
Well, it was a revisit to one of the best – some say the best – music festival documentary. And you are again totally seduced by the power of music and by the superb camera work performed by a team…
Igor Mayboroda: Rerberg and Tarkovsky
140 minutes with the subtitle ”The Reverse Side of ”Stalker””. Watched in one shot, you feel exhausted afterwards, and more than happy having experienced the company of Russian artists at their best in a drama put together in a demanding…
Igor Mayboroda: Rerberg and Tarkovsky/ 2
Taken from the voice-off subtitles of the film, Rerberg reads the following: The process of creating a shot, is determined by the life position of an artist, which is determined by the time and country he lives in, the cultural…
Ulla Boje Rasmussen: Thors Saga
Filmen om den markante islandske familie Thor og dens rejse i fire generationer gennem landets økonomiske op- og nedgange har været længe undervejs. I årevis har den omhyggelige dokumentarist Ulla Boje Rasmussen på rejse efter rejse samlet stof sideløbende med, at…
The Syrian Revolution/ 4
How long will it last? How long can the Western world watch this massacre on civilians that go on in Syria? Syrian filmmaker posted this text on facebook 20 minutes ago: Today, a UN envoy arrived to the Syrian city…
Det går godt for Dokumentarfilmen
A small text on good times for the documentary in cinemas and media coverage in Denmark. More films in cinemas, much more press than before, reviews in daily newspapers of dvd’s Jo, det ser godt ud for dokumentaren. Ihvertfald var…
Nanna Frank Møller: Let’s Be Together
Under titlen ”En Feminin Dreng” viser DR2’s Dokumania en af de væsentligste, nye danske dokumentarfilm, som har vakt berettiget opsigt både inden- som udenlands under sin originaltitel, ”Let’s Be Together”. Her er anmeldelsen, som vi bragte, da filmen blev vist…
The Battle for Tripoli
Our Paris correspondent Sara Thelle links on her facebook page to the development in Tripoli, take a look at the photo documentation brought by aljazeera. Text for the photo: Tens of thousands of Libyans celebrated what the rebels claim to…